Role Models

How did this Rust Belt village of 10,000 people resurrect itself from a 30-year slide? It started with a road. Twelve years ago, the State Transportation Department proposed improving U.S. Route 62, the village’s mile-long Main Street, by adding another traffic lane, removing parallel parking and narrowing sidewalks. When Susan Burns, a lifelong Hamburg resident, saw the plan, she remembers asking, “What are you doing with the trees and the people?” She said she was told by state officials, “We have to get the traffic through.”

Ms. Burns feared that the road expansion might be the fatal blow to the village that many had once compared to the idyllic Bedford Falls in the 1940s movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Many worried that Hamburg was sliding toward Pottersville, or worse yet, a ghost town...